Friday, August 23, 2013

Silence unlocks the key to happiness

Silence has always been in eulogized.Krsnadasa Kaviraja
Goswami, a renowned saint, has said that silence
is one of the 26 qualities of a devotee of the Lord.Many people keep maun brat – on a specific day they do not speak anything.This can help one to control their tongue but
what about the mind. We just do not speak through our tongue but we also speak
through our minds. Our mind is a chatter box. There is not even a single moment
when we can say that our mind remains calm and silent. Mentally we keep on
talking to ourselves, we keep on contemplating on things like money, job,
family, friends, politics, opposite sex, cricket match and so on. There are
some meditation schools who teach to mediate on something null & void. According
to them this would help to silence
our mind. But this is practically impossible. As a soul we are ananda - mayo bhayasat - pleasure
seeking - and mediating on void will not provide us any pleasure. It will make our life boring and later
frustrating.

Real silence
is to stop contemplating & stop speaking about unnecessary subject matters which
disturbs our mind. Instead of this we should contemplate on & speaking
about spiritual topics which take us closer to God.Prahlad Maharaj has listed sravanam and kirtanam as the two processes of devotional service. Sravanam means to hear about Krishna and
kirtanam means to always speak about
Krishna. These two processes will take us closer to God.So, instead of wasting our precious time and
energy thinking and speaking about unworthy subject matters let us utilize each
moment of our life thinking and speaking about Krishna.Thinking about Krishna also gives us lots of
pleasure. It opens the door for everlasting happiness.